Learning Florence ﻿﻿﻿

For many people Monday is a difficult day, beginning of a busy work week, but not in Florence. For us, that particular Monday was the beginning of a new project, which gave us much experience, knowledge and new friends.

On Monday, organizers and participants of the project met in the hall of Auditorium al Duomo to discuss the purpose and the weekly program of the project. The meeting started with a speech of Simone Giometti, the General Secretary of Foundation, who told us about Romualdo Del Bianco Foundation, the purposes of this programme and about the project aims.

The main purpose is the development of international relations, international cooperation and creation of a broad platform of information about Florence, its sights, great people, who have contributed to the creation and formation of the unique culture of this city.

Next spoke Professor, Doctor of Philology, Vice-Rector of Ivanovo State University, the leader and the ideological inspirer of the project Olga Michaylovna Karpova, who gave us an incredible opportunity to touch the great history of the city and make a small contribution to the study of Florence’s culture. Olga Michaylovna familiarized us with the results of the previous years’ projects and presented the draft work programme for 2012. We anxiously listened to every word and were happy to be a part of this wonderful event.

The next in the agenda of our meeting was something very exciting for all participants: presentations prepared by the participants of the conference. There were presenters of the Universities of Ivanovo, Kazan, Perm, Vladimir, Chelyabinsk, Yaroslavl and Tomsk. It was very nice that every presentation had its own creativity and feature and it was obvious that all the presenters understood the significance of the project and were very responsible.

The feeling that we are different people from different cities and universities, but we have the same goal, gave us a sense of integrity and great responsibility.

After the presentations of the participants the project organizers introduced us to the work of the portal Life Beyond Tourism, which was another link, connecting us with Florence. I think that all the participants evaluated how much effort is put into this work because it was obvious that a large group of professionals work for this project to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to feel and understand the beauty and the undoubted importance of Florence.

It was our first day in Italy, where we met with the organizers and participants of the project, learned the programme for a week and began to discover Florence, the city that we fell in love with.﻿